Dirt_McGirrt
Well-Known Member
I dove balls deep into growing my own and extracting my own medicine. Been reading around here and future4200 for months. If anyone has any tips or if there's something I'm missing, it'd be greatly appreciated because I've pretty much exhausted what I can find.
Equipment:
1.5" closed column in 3 sizes - 12" 18" 36"
Triblend butane cans - 54% N-tane, 22% pro, 24% iso-tane
3 gal vacuum chamber pot
6 cfm spark free pump
chest freezer that goes to -20C
denature alcohol (heptane)
Fritted buchner - still place a 20 micron quantitative to keep the frit clean
cold trap
cellite
bentonite low ph
activated charcoal
(no recovery system for any solvents yet)
When I harvest I'll load the column that day. Take fan leaves off. I use a bud bucker pull through thing to take buds off big stems. Break up large buds down to as much 1/4" as possible. Pretty much everything that has visible goodness goes in at once. I'll pack one or more columns with fresh full moisture bud and trim, pull vac, and toss into the chest freezer for 8-24 hours. Rest of the material is left out for full dry runs the next week, which I also pull vac and freeze after packing column. I do freeze the whole thing. I have a couple end caps so I can pull vac on individual columns if I'm running all in one day. Butane cans are frozen for about 2 hours, I've read dangers of seals breaking. When I pull the columns out of the freezer I'll pull vac again and if I have to assemble anything after full freeze. I work quick from freezer to tane running over material.
I'll use anywhere from 2x column capacity for solvent, to 4x. For example on the 12" I'll run a full can. 30" I'll run at least 2 cans. Dry runs I could probably run tane over it all day but it'll just pull junk after awhile. Fresh runs I soak for maybe 1 minute to 5 minutes, sometimes just open right away. I judge by the first bit that comes out and I'll stop blasting if it looks like it could use a longer soak first pass. Second pass I'll let go the full 5 minutes. Dry runs I just go dirty, grind up in a coffee grinder, let it soak, clean it up later, run 2x as much tane as fresh frozen.
The filter plate section between the loaded column and sight glass I've been trying to use as a slight dewaxer and dejunker. I've done a couple runs with a PTFE membrane filter at 0.45um under the filter ring. I'm not sure if it's doing anything, though. My idea on this was the filter section loaded with steel wool and chilled with some filter paper would do an alright job. Seems to be clearer when it comes out. Could totally use some feedback on this setup. Sight glass is there just to see if I'm running clear or not. Easier than trying to tell by the stream being blasted into my catch can (bane marie or mason jar).
I don't winterize the fresh full moisture runs until after purge and a taste test, 10:1 winterize if too harsh. Dry runs are purged with a water bath and then denatured alcohol at 10:1, frozen in chest freezer for 24 hours at least (I've left shit in there for weeks sometimes).
Vac purging the butane is easy peasy at nearly room temp. I'm trying to figure out how to get anything but sap or shatter/pullnsnap but so far that's all I've been able to produce off no winterization. I've had some stuff done purging in 12 hours, some took 48. Tried sauce teks, whip teks, all the teks and still never getting it to . . nucleate is the word? I'd like to get some to sugar up. Might be that I'm pretty much vaping the stuff right when it's done purging so it doesn't even get that much time to do it on it's own. Or it's too much fats/lipids still? It's like my endless hill to climb right now.
Winterizing with the denatured alcohol has been my recent attempt. It does a fine job on taking out junk and fats as far as I can tell. I don't have a roto vap like 99% of what I can find says to use. So I've got a hot plate and an oil bath to purge nearly all of it at least at 175F. I recently read a thread where putting water with the denatured alcohol will help it purge and crash out more fats, still need to try that next time. It doesn't take too long to boil off most of it while making sure to stir it almost continually. I had it flash boil over a couple times, it's crossed my mind that the added bit of water to the start of the winterizing might help. Once it's bubbly and thick it's poured onto PTFE boat. Boat is placed into open vac chamber set at 110, floor temp of chamber reads at ~120. Place boat in chamber. Once it's done bein bubbly I pull vac. Depending on how much is in there I'll creep up the vacuum pressure to keep it from boiling out of the boat. Eventually hit 29.5". Instead of "flipping the patty" I just stir it up a bit after bubbles stop under full vac because it's viscous still and pull vac again. Let it stop bubbling and repeat. I had my second batch finish like this with no residual smell or taste after 12hours. I'm purging more in the chamber, same process, but appears to be taking way longer.
Equipment:
1.5" closed column in 3 sizes - 12" 18" 36"
Triblend butane cans - 54% N-tane, 22% pro, 24% iso-tane
3 gal vacuum chamber pot
6 cfm spark free pump
chest freezer that goes to -20C
denature alcohol (heptane)
Fritted buchner - still place a 20 micron quantitative to keep the frit clean
cold trap
cellite
bentonite low ph
activated charcoal
(no recovery system for any solvents yet)
When I harvest I'll load the column that day. Take fan leaves off. I use a bud bucker pull through thing to take buds off big stems. Break up large buds down to as much 1/4" as possible. Pretty much everything that has visible goodness goes in at once. I'll pack one or more columns with fresh full moisture bud and trim, pull vac, and toss into the chest freezer for 8-24 hours. Rest of the material is left out for full dry runs the next week, which I also pull vac and freeze after packing column. I do freeze the whole thing. I have a couple end caps so I can pull vac on individual columns if I'm running all in one day. Butane cans are frozen for about 2 hours, I've read dangers of seals breaking. When I pull the columns out of the freezer I'll pull vac again and if I have to assemble anything after full freeze. I work quick from freezer to tane running over material.
I'll use anywhere from 2x column capacity for solvent, to 4x. For example on the 12" I'll run a full can. 30" I'll run at least 2 cans. Dry runs I could probably run tane over it all day but it'll just pull junk after awhile. Fresh runs I soak for maybe 1 minute to 5 minutes, sometimes just open right away. I judge by the first bit that comes out and I'll stop blasting if it looks like it could use a longer soak first pass. Second pass I'll let go the full 5 minutes. Dry runs I just go dirty, grind up in a coffee grinder, let it soak, clean it up later, run 2x as much tane as fresh frozen.
The filter plate section between the loaded column and sight glass I've been trying to use as a slight dewaxer and dejunker. I've done a couple runs with a PTFE membrane filter at 0.45um under the filter ring. I'm not sure if it's doing anything, though. My idea on this was the filter section loaded with steel wool and chilled with some filter paper would do an alright job. Seems to be clearer when it comes out. Could totally use some feedback on this setup. Sight glass is there just to see if I'm running clear or not. Easier than trying to tell by the stream being blasted into my catch can (bane marie or mason jar).
I don't winterize the fresh full moisture runs until after purge and a taste test, 10:1 winterize if too harsh. Dry runs are purged with a water bath and then denatured alcohol at 10:1, frozen in chest freezer for 24 hours at least (I've left shit in there for weeks sometimes).
Vac purging the butane is easy peasy at nearly room temp. I'm trying to figure out how to get anything but sap or shatter/pullnsnap but so far that's all I've been able to produce off no winterization. I've had some stuff done purging in 12 hours, some took 48. Tried sauce teks, whip teks, all the teks and still never getting it to . . nucleate is the word? I'd like to get some to sugar up. Might be that I'm pretty much vaping the stuff right when it's done purging so it doesn't even get that much time to do it on it's own. Or it's too much fats/lipids still? It's like my endless hill to climb right now.
Winterizing with the denatured alcohol has been my recent attempt. It does a fine job on taking out junk and fats as far as I can tell. I don't have a roto vap like 99% of what I can find says to use. So I've got a hot plate and an oil bath to purge nearly all of it at least at 175F. I recently read a thread where putting water with the denatured alcohol will help it purge and crash out more fats, still need to try that next time. It doesn't take too long to boil off most of it while making sure to stir it almost continually. I had it flash boil over a couple times, it's crossed my mind that the added bit of water to the start of the winterizing might help. Once it's bubbly and thick it's poured onto PTFE boat. Boat is placed into open vac chamber set at 110, floor temp of chamber reads at ~120. Place boat in chamber. Once it's done bein bubbly I pull vac. Depending on how much is in there I'll creep up the vacuum pressure to keep it from boiling out of the boat. Eventually hit 29.5". Instead of "flipping the patty" I just stir it up a bit after bubbles stop under full vac because it's viscous still and pull vac again. Let it stop bubbling and repeat. I had my second batch finish like this with no residual smell or taste after 12hours. I'm purging more in the chamber, same process, but appears to be taking way longer.
